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In Brief

There was no gold medal, no podium ceremony, and definitely no tears from the losers on 30 July, but there was a new national champion. On that date, NOAA proclaimed that a South Dakota hailstone had surpassed all contenders in both size and weight.

Blossoming interest in geoengineering research over the last few years has ripened into a deeper consideration of the topic by scientists, policymakers, and the public. This interest has been boosted by a relative lack of action on mitigating climate change.

It’s not exactly a moment for celebration, but when a tropical storm is born in the Atlantic, millions of people learn about it quickly. As with any birth, though, a great deal has to happen in just the right way before a tropical storm is christened.

Richard Anthes suspected something was up when the UCAR Board of Trustees, minus himself, trooped to the stage at the institution’s 50th birthday dinner on 5 October. “When they started showing photos of my childhood, I really knew something was coming.”

One of the most influential and colorful atmospheric scientists of modern times passed from the scene unexpectedly on 19 July. Stephen Schneider died of an apparent heart attack while on board a flight from Sweden to London.

New, more interactive and versatile uses of the Web are beginning to enable profound changes in the entire life cycle of scientific publications. Among these developments, one that is currently looming large in many scientists’ minds is open access.

Between 1969 and 1971, NCAR scientist John Eddy set out to archive an important part of the history of both photography and astronomy. Eddy collected more than 100 pictures of total solar eclipses taken from the late 1800s into the mid-1900s.

In January 2010, Roger Wakimoto was asked to direct NCAR. “Roger is a world-class scientist and administrator with broad knowledge of both the atmospheric sciences and the university community that NCAR serves,” says UCAR president Richard Anthes.

The mysteries of the atmosphere are compelling enough to bring many into the fold of atmospheric and related science. But if you’re a first-generation college student from an underrepresented group, other factors may steer you away, according to UCAR’s Raj Pandya.

It’s been a busy spring for community climate modeling at NCAR. One major release pushes the veteran CCSM forward. Another release is on the way: the Community Earth System Model, which brings a new paradigm into the mix.

During the stormy summer of 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita raised concerns about the potential effects of global warming on tropical cyclones. At the same time, the Amazon rainforest was experiencing one of its most intense droughts of the last century.

Atmospheric scientists around the world are mourning the loss of Joanne Simpson. The 87-year-old researcher, who upended stereotypes and made landmark contributions to meteorology, died on 4 March in Washington, DC.

If the last few years have seen a so-called quiet Sun, its silence has spoken volumes. Researchers have taken advantage of a raft of new sensors and a special observing campaign to learn much about what happens when the sun temporarily powers down.

Unidata celebrated its 25th anniversary on 15-16 October with a rare gathering of staff, founders, partners, and collaborators from around the country. Attendees celebrated the program's accomplishments and looked ahead to the future.

The giant comma-shaped storm systems that traverse the Midwest from fall through spring carry more than a few secrets. Radar, lidar, and profiler beams are now slicing through those storms, hunting for small-scale features that normally go unobserved.

Years before Congress began debating greenhouse-gas reduction, more than 500 U.S. cities had pledged to reduce their carbon footprints in line with the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Now American cities are leading the way on adapting to climate change.

In eastern Tennessee a portrait of Earth's progression from ice age to present is taking shape. Each day, up to 100 years of climatic history unfolds. By early this year, the story will be complete, thanks to some five million processing hours on supercomputers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A growing body of research now confirms that the Montreal agreement averted at least one catastrophic form of climate change, even if others still loom. "The Montreal Protocol is a major success story," says William Randel.

This spring the second Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX2, or V2) captured one tornado in unprecedented detail, as well as a number of potentially tornadic thunderstorms that never made the grade.

When you've been studying the ways of the atmosphere since the 1930s, you have many tales to tell. Joachim Kuettner has been sharing his life stories, including some lesser-known ones, in a new round of oral and video histories.

In a breakthrough that will help scientists unlock mysteries of the Sun and its impacts on Earth, an international team of scientists from NCAR and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research has created the first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots.

Eleven days can go by in no time, but their brevity was accentuated for 27 graduate students at a summer colloquium on 1–12 June. The goal was to give students a taste of fieldwork by having them organize and conduct mini–field experiments and draw meaningful results from the data.